I’m laughing this time. Moving to the ebb and flow of each syncopated beat. Saturating my body with every single juicy bass bound whirl. I’m absolutely loving it.

I told you, I was laughing. A grin teasing away at each residual bit of baby fat still clinging on for the youthful justice on my cheeks. The muscles of my mouth would only rest on a smile, no bit small but restful nonetheless.

Grinning. Smiling. Laughing.

I can see my best friend. Cozy near the small bar of the club, talking to a bouncer. About what? I don’t know. But she was smiling. And that’s all I needed to see.

That’s all I needed to see before closing my eyes once again. Mimicking each wave of the music with my spine. Colours are tracking my body with their eyes, I follow along its tantalising tale.

I open my eyes once more and this time she’s smiling at me. I smile back. A genuine exchange of happiness.

I would hold onto my friends arm, eyes unfocused, intoxicated on the latest chemical, stumbling still into the arms of a wall. Slip down and enjoy the sensation of its cold kiss.

I wouldn’t be quite sure where I was going, what I was doing but the serene calamity of it all would wobble my consciousness into a gasping breath. I could stay there forever like that. The pulsing flash and bang of the dingy, dirty club shaking pores loose of sweat. Above me each dripped droplets piercingly onto my flesh, vibrating where it touched. And yet, I was always whisked away. My friends hand would find itself wrapped around my forearm and pull me into the fresh air.

And like that, clarity would appear like the breeze whisping its way around each square centimetre of exposed meat on my body. I would inhale and without knowing it, I could breathe again.

Where was I? Who was I? Who cares?

I didn’t know. I still don’t.

All I would know was that I was thankful for the interruption.

Around a corner we would go. Another line. Another sniff.

I’m leaning, leaning, leaning backwards into myself. Melting on a shoulder. Hands wondering which are not my own. Unfamiliar, clammy, rough and big. I let it happen. And then there’s my friend again – aggressiveness overtakes her. She pulls me away from the melting shoulder and I’m outside again.

We take another line.

See?

Didn’t I tell you?

Didn’t I tell you I was always whisked away?

Didn’t I?

Not anymore. Things change. People do the same. Moments like that evaporate into memories better forgotten. Happiness is futile so why distract it by stumbling in the dark of your own mind? Why absorb yourself in memories too diluted by the pain of the movement?

First off, I’m pretty much done with being alive. I look all around me and all I am blinded by in my waking moments is a consumerist lifestyle that continues to propel me into my student loans. And when that is washed down the drain by my heavy, unbridled spending, I can stitch my eyes closed even further to the increasing debt as I dip my sticky fingers £2,000 deep into my overdraft.

All great. All deconstructed.

Let’s move on.

Since engaging in this broadcast state, where every self-obsessed waking thought is living and breathing on instagram, Facebook and so on; where you can see from the comfort of the own phone, which are all in their own self-righteous way apparently smart, what Jessica had for breakfast 2 seconds ago, I find it particularly difficult to allow anyone past a superficial level into my life.

Even so, I will always be envious of those who have the opportunity to be vulnerable with each other. To let people into their lives, knowing full well they will experience so much pain. An easy trade I believe if you understand the full scope of the liberation pain can bring. Healing rarely occurs without some form of pain beforehand and so in that sense, it is completely worth it. Scary in its own right. Not so common regardless but still, because of it, I feel indefinitely unloved as this is not something I have obvious capacity to achieve any time soon.

In the meantime, I’ve joined websites that will support my eccentric lifestyle of consuming drugs, both prescription and otherwise. A website where I will have my internal needs of being able to dump my emotional baggage onto another, a steady flow of validation despite the absolute ridiculous turmoil bouncing against my heart, all met.

An impossible illusion? Perhaps. I’m laughing.

Anyway, where was I?

Put simply, if I can get paid for giving away something that is becoming increasingly meaningless to me – that is sex – then why the hell not? I would prefer it. So, emotional needs met? Check. Physical needs met? Check, check.

Hm, so that’s dealing with or rather, addressing my feelings of being unloved, possibly feeling of how “unguided” I feel, maybe a tad bit of feeling “lost”.

And now, the loneliness:

Well, let’s be honest, I was born to be lonely in a room full of people. (Self-pitying, I know but please, bear with?) Four other siblings, countless cousins, a hundred or two of possible peers to make friends with and not one of them ever wanted to play when I was younger? Long story short, I was never comfortable with being alone but I certainly adopted mannerisms which I thought would hopefully fool those around me otherwise. I mean, the reading, the silence, the headphones always in – all ways to push and pull away from those around me.

It’s hilarious because I haven’t even gotten into how that has translated into my adult life now. Let me digress for a second. When I feel a friendship is being threatened by outside forces, I will keep that friend at arms length while mentally straining not to pull them closer and never let go. The fear is real. The anxiety deafening. I’m a bit of a maverick in that way. A bit destructive. Ready to overdose on my own medicine.

Should I even continue?

My point is: Life is going swell. My self-destructive behaviour is reeking havoc in my mind’s eye, colouring everything distasteful and breeding a weird brand of distrust between me and my surrounding environment.

Oh, and I’ve taken up smoking. It’s lessening the anxiety to be honest. Or making it worse.

Every night when I’m in bed, while the sun is setting and there’s just enough light peeping between the blinds hanging closed against my window, I see the silhouette of my mouse sitting on my left side.

See, the thing about my pet mouse is that it’s not real. I got him at a market a while back in London. He was supposed to replace the feeling of loneliness after my boyfriend at the time had flaked on me yet again. My boyfriend had promised to take me to this market for about 4 months and every time the monthly market rolled around, he was too busy, too preoccupied to hold up to his promise.

Anyway, I ended up calling my dark green, crotchet mouse Pip after somehow losing him in a pile of blankets, duvets and pillows. I remember at first calmly and then quite desperately looking for him between the sheets, calling out:

And then soon after finding him lying by himself on the floor after probably falling out from between my ruffled duvet. I apologised to him and placed him at the head of my bed, on my left hand side.

At the beginning of this post, I stated that Pip was not real. That was incorrect, Pip is very real to me. He represents the only other toy without reason, I took a liking to and decided after about 2 hours of browsing to pick up and openly and instantly fall in love with. I fell in love with him. Kind of like I did with my ex boyfriend.

What I’m learning is that there is no set way to react to things. You can’t cater and change your reactions to suit those around you. You can’t please everyone you meet. Sometimes things straight up disgusts you, or makes you angry or shocked. You are not going to have the same reaction as other people and that is because you are unique. You grew up differently from another person. Don’t be afraid to say so. React, respond and learn.

People grow up and get over their pain. They stop ruminating over their past, all the mistakes they made stop weighing them down, stop creating fingerprints in their future and they just… move on.

Something I haven’t been able to do yet. Somehow, I’m still here, alive but not living. Jealous of everyone who was able to break in two and still put themselves back together. You see, I’ve always cracked, fractured my internal being, aways have creased and bent in ways unimaginable by the human mind. But unfortunately for me, I’ve never broken. Never had the chance to fully break into a million pieces and start again.

Or, maybe I have. Maybe I was broken to begin with and have never had the chance to feel whole. That the cracks and fractures are created on a body already broken. That the reason it’s taking me so long to be mobile again is because, I’ve always been broken in the first place.

You see, my energy has waned over the years. The want to try has decreased immeasurably. I used to have hope, belief I could be something, do something with my life. Now? I don’t know what the point is because despite the beauty around me, I remain to feel on the outskirts of it all. So far removed from life, what’s the point of living it?

For the last few months I’ve been stuck in this horrible limbo of giving up on life and not quite giving up on life. And I honestly thought that no one out there would be able to comprehend such a static way of living until I met my friends. And with these friends, I went out with during the entire weekend, drinking heavily, snorting a lot of cocaine and sleeping very little each night. Before finding myself in the exact same position on Monday morning, feeling much worse for it all. I was now broke, both financially and emotionally.

The days after was filled with avoiding my bank statements which continued to decline in 100s. I was minus 200 one week and then minus 500 the next. Emotionally, my depression was reaping havoc on my days and the sister of depression – suicidal ideation would pop it’s ugly head and whisper sweet nothings into my ears. And all the while, I saw nothing intrinsically wrong with my life.

But I do remember one morning telling my friends that maybe I was developing a terrible drug habit, that my bank account was empty and that I had accumulated this horrible debt that never stops hanging over me like a black cloud over my head. And what did they do? They laughed at it all as if I was insane. Saying that their addiction was worse than my own as I only went on a gram binge every weekend, that my 700 pound debt was nothing, I’ll eventually get out of it.

So, instead of feeling insulted, I just felt like I was going insane. That my method of getting out of rock bottom was working. To drink more, snort more, smoke more, sleep less, care less and strive for less. All of which was the perfect antidote.

But I’ll tell you something now, it never was.

Hitting rock bottom is this funny thing. I thought you’d know when you reached it. When you felt the fiery ground at your feet is when you went into a sudden but cleansing mental breakdown. Kind of like a volcanic eruption, that bathes the foundation in its destructive upbringing ready for something new.

But no, it can be quite different. Quite deliberate in its torture of you. You can feel the cold ground of the bottom glazing the soles of your feet, your entire body submerged in this icy water, your nose just sticking out slightly to sniff the snow. Your organs frozen, your heart gripped in a damaging growth and your brain deteriorating slowly but surely. You can be ready to cry for help but for what? How can you explain the numbness to another, how easily and ready you are to go into a slumber. That you haven’t been fully awake for days, for months. It’s horrible. It’s how my life has been.